"A
Remembrance of the Past; Building for the Future." ~ Eve
Eckert Koehler

Remembering Our Danube Swabian Ancestors

The Early
Colonization of Swabian Turkey

by
Josef Hoben

Translated
by Henry Fischer

The would-be
settlers received an Imperial pass for
their journey down the Danube. In most
cases it was a collective pass for a
whole group that included agricultural
implements, tradesmen's tools and
livestock they brought with them that
was needed when they passed through the
toll booths along the way. Only those
named in the collective pass could
undertake the journey. In this way they
tried to protect them from hangers-on
and fellow travellers who might be "illegal's"
who would attempt to pass as bona fide
settlers. In the "Travel Regulations"
the following stipulation was made:
"the previously mentioned Swabians along
with their wives and children...are not
allowed to step on dry land on their
entire journey or try to remain
somewhere after passing by the Royal
residential city of Vienna but travel on
directly to Hungary."

Such precautions
were apparently necessary because it had
been learned that some rather large
groups of settlers never reached their
designated destination. In fact, this
happened frequently. Nobles and other
landlords represented by their agents
recruited colonists bound for the Banat
to settle on their private domains and
lured them off the ships at Dunafӧldvár,
Paks or Tolna with promises that went
far beyond what had attracted the
settlers to Hungary in the first place.
The dupe in all of this was the noble
who had recruited them in Germany and
had invested a considerable sum of money
in his would-be settlers. The Imperial
Agent of the Crown, the landlord of the
Tevel Domain, Dóry, must have been taken
in like this more than once, for his
agent Felbinger attests he was
instructed to accompany the settlers he
recruited so that they would not be lost
along the way. In 1721 a large convoy
of settlers was awaited in the Banat but
they never arrived. Research indicates
the settlers left the ships in Buda,
Dunafӧldvár and Paks along the Danube.
The most famous of those who brought
about this kind of deviation in the
destination of the settlers and
recruited them for the private domains
of their noble master were the estate
administrators of Count Mercy
(especially those of de Mercy-Argenteau)
in the Tolna whose activities earned
them the title, "systematic settler
stealers" by one historian of the
period.

Fate was not
kind to the first settlers. They were
often parted from their money by
fraudulent agents and corrupt
shipmasters. In their first years in
Hungary they were often plagued with
hunger because the newly cultivated
fields did not provide much of a yield
in terms of the crops they planted.
Many settlers found it necessary to take
on other work in addition to their
farming. In times of need the
inhabitants of Szakadát had to earn
their bread as masons and construction
workers on the Mercy Domain in Hӧgyész
and on other occasions they had to work
as far away as one hundred kilometres.

An even greater
danger and threat were the floods and
many harvests were ruined as a result.
There was always the threat of war that
existed in those regions where the Turks
were still in the vicinity and often
raided the settlements. In many
villages, especially those with a mixed
population in terms of nationality,
Kuruz raids flared up when many of the
villages were still in the first stage
of their development and were almost
totally wiped out. But the worst
threats were sickness and epidemics.

In addition to
the promises made to the colonists
(exemption from taxes and levies; the
termination of serfdom; religious
freedom; assistance in house
construction; providing farming
equipment; the granting of arable land
and meadows) were not or were not fully
met. The estate owning nobles were
allowed to impose the Robot (forced free
labour) on their settlers as well as a
tithe (one ninth or one tenth) of their
crops, poultry, livestock and wine, all
of which were especially forbidden in
the Repopulation Patent. The settlers
could not necessarily expect much in the
way of support from their landlord but
there were always some exceptions and in
some villages in addition to the
exemption from paying taxes and freedom
from the tithe for three to six years
they were also allocated oxen and
livestock on credit, and lumber and
timber for building and farming
equipment were given as an outright
gift. But they of course were in the
minority.

For that reason
there is no dearth of examples during
this early settlement period of totally
impoverished or sick settlers who
undertook the journey back home having
been forced into a life of beggary. In
the Minutes of the City Council of the
Royal Free City of Ulm in the year 1712
there is a report that the city had to
undertake energetic measures to ward off
the dangers involved by their return.
While the shipping interests in Ulm saw
the welcome possibility of huge profits
as the steady stream of emigrants grew
in May and June of 1712, a report
arrived from Vienna on June 27th with
the news that many of the returnees from
Hungary who were reduced to beggary were
making their way back home. Those who
were healthy were doing so on foot and
the sick were on board ships. The
population of Ulm feared that the
returnees would bring an epidemic to the
city or even the "Hungarian sickness"
(swamp fever) that they associated with
the Black Death that had decimated the
population of Western Europe in the 16th
and 17th centuries. For that reason the
magistrates sought to have the ships
with the sick returnees dock before
reaching Ulm and go on to Offingen. On
September 22, 1712 two ships with sick
Swabians onboard arrived in Leipheim.
The sick were treated and cared for at
the expense of the Royal Free City of
Ulm.

In December of
the same year another ship docked at
Donauwürth, where the returnees were
cared for at the cost of the District.

A typical and
much repeated example of a failed
emigration attempt to Hungary (which was
not to be an isolated case by far) is
that of Konrad Rӧder from Dippach that
belongs to the Bishopric of Fulda. In
an official Patent of May 28, 1778 the
Prince Elector Abbot Constantin von
Buttlar reported that the said Rӧder had
returned from Hungary because there
"everyone is in bondage" which a German
cannot tolerate. Before his emigration
Rӧder had sold his property and
possessions from which he had to pay a
manumission fee of 10% of their value to
his landlord the Abbey of Fulda. He was
forced to use the rest of it on his
journey. The Prince Abbot used this
frightening example to warn his subjects
about "going off to Hungary" because of
the dangers involved in the emigration,
although at the same time he did not
forbid them to do so. In future only
those returnees to the Bishopric who had
an estate of 200 Gulden with them would
be eligible for support until they could
re-establish themselves. He did so in
order to hinder the Bishopric becoming
overrun with beggars and draw countless
other poor people.

The release of
such a decree indicates that the
emigrants during this early period of
the emigration to Hungary would not have
been exclusively from among the poorest
people but people who had a "stake" of
at least 200 Gulden in order to be in a
position to settle in Hungary. In 1722,
in Regensburg where emigrants from
Fulda, Darmstadt and Franconia boarded
the ships, fifty of the would-be
emigrant families were sent back home
because they could not show they had the
minimum amount of cash with them. As a
consequence several of the families
sought out a shipmaster who was not as
stringent about the Prince Bishop's
decree and took them onboard.